Panic in a Suitcase: A Novel - Couverture rigide

Akhtiorskaya, Yelena

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1594632146 ISBN 13 : 9781594632143

Editeur : Riverhead Books, 2014

A propos du livre

Extrait :

PART ONE

1993

ONE

THE MORNING WAS IDEAL, a crime to waste it cooped up. They were off to the shore. That means you, too, Pasha—you need some color, a dunk would do you good, so would a stroll. Aren’t you curious to see Coney Island? Freud had been. Don’t deliberate till it’s too late. Strokes are known to make surprise appearances in the family. Who knows how long . . . ? Now, get up off that couch!

Pasha had just flown in last night and didn’t feel well—achy joints, profuse sweating, a bout of tachycardia. It was as if his family could hear the roar of blood in his ears and tried to shout over it. A sum total of fourteen hours strapped into an aisle seat near the gurgling lavatory of a dented, gasoline-reeking airplane, two layovers, and a night spent in the stiff embrace of a plastic bench in the Kiev airport would’ve been tough on any constitution, and Pasha didn’t have just any constitution but that of a poet—sickly from the outset, the dysfunction lying in the vital organs (heart, lungs), nose and ears disproportionately large for the head, head abnormally large for the body, premature stains under the eyes, spooky immobility of gaze, vermicelli limbs, metabolic peculiarities. If he’d been smart, he would’ve been born at least half a century earlier into a noble family and spent his adult life hopping between tiny Swiss Alp towns and lakeside sanatoria, soaking in bathhouses and natural springs, rubbing thighs with steamy neurotics, taking aimless strolls with the assistance of a branch, corrupting tubercular maidens, composing spirited if long-winded letters to those with this-world cares, letters that would seem to emerge from a time vacuum, with epigrammatic morsels of wisdom and nature descriptions of the breathtaking but exasperating sort.

Instead Pasha was born in 1956 to a family whose nobility was strictly of spirit. A dusty courtyard was the extent of his interactions with nature, a branch of assistance only in fending off feral dogs. He rode trams, avoided doctors. Correspondences, if initiated, fell by the wayside before long. He grew to be unreasonably tall (a result of too many parsnips—that must’ve been it, since he never touched a carrot or a potato), though it would’ve been better were he small and compact, considering the quality of motor control he exercised. His figure moved precariously along the street. There were hovels, abandoned or rustling with elderly squatters, that proceeded to stand while promising to collapse with the next gust. They were plenty on the outskirts of Odessa, but even in the city center there was one on most blocks. They no longer struck the eye as a single entity—a house—but as a pile of boards, bent, twisted, leaning; a heap, rubble, cats. Pasha’s skeletal structure was a bit like that. Prophets are not meant to be healthy, wrote Brodsky, who suffered his first myocardial infarction at the age of thirty-six. At least he’d had broad shoulders. A poet must be feeble, ugly, somehow at a physical disadvantage; if not born that way, he’d promptly get to work on his disintegration by way of alcohol, cigarettes, insomnia, depression. Pasha didn’t have to put in the effort. His time could be spent on other endeavors.

Pasha’s physique resembled Odessa’s habitations but not its inhabitants, who were built well (no complaints there). They were tall but not beyond their means, spry and sinewy, with tans so deep they must’ve had extra layers of skin, crude jawlines, and coarse yellow hair. They ate fried dough, fried cabbage, dog meat, and exuded an obstinate vitality. Yet it seemed as if nature had taken less time with them, not more, as if the craft were in the defects. Their superior biological constitutions were perhaps correlated to the dilapidation of their dwelling spaces; there’s an inverse relationship to be found here.

Other relationships, however, required tending. Pasha was in Brooklyn, where both the buildings and the people were in need of fortifying, and he’d be honoring the borough with his presence for all of July—the entire month! There would be no shortage of first-rate mornings, he pointed out to his restless kin, who mistook the manipulations of neuroses for liveliness, enthusiasm. Look out the window! they shouted. Just look out the window!

Tomorrow will be even better, said Pasha. Not as humid.

How presumptuous. What did he know about Julys in New York? As a matter of fact, they were wet, dreary, unpredictable. All of this, however, was beside the point. Having just arrived, he should want to spend time with his family. They’d have plenty of opportunities to tire of one another.

If there was tension, it was partly attributable to the way Pasha had dealt with his impending visit, which was the way he dealt with all practical matters—avoid until they could be avoided no more, a point decided not by him but by external forces (however hard he tried to ignore these forces, they wouldn’t ignore him). His sister, Marina, had done everything within her power to simplify the process short of chartering a private jet. She’d decided on the dates and sent him the fare for his ticket. They had no money, but Pasha had even less. When he received the envelope with the cash and felt its weight in his palm, it was somehow even less tangible than when he’d been informed it was coming. He put the envelope in the center of the kitchen table and for the next month endured a dread of mealtimes, indulging the preference to eat at his desk. Nothing happened, yet the days passed. He grew pale and perplexed. There wasn’t a more horrifying, cold-sweat-inducing suspicion than that those external forces had finally decided to give up on him. He spoke regularly with his father, Robert, who wouldn’t dare strain relations by mentioning such banalities as a plane ticket. Marina juggled an increasing number of jobs and was always running in and out of the background, passing on hellos. But one day she grabbed the phone. Evidently she’d lost her sense for small talk and banter, the very traits her new land was known to cultivate. What time do we pick you up? she asked. A silence. I’ll tell you tomorrow, replied Pasha. The travel agency ridiculed him. Tickets now cost twice the amount he’d been sent, money he didn’t have. Marina flew into a howling rage that Pasha couldn’t comprehend—really, it was a simple mistake. Then, just as suddenly, the tempest turned off. The abruptness of the switch from stormy to calm only demonstrated how often such a switch had been practiced, how little faith she had in communicating a message to her brother, and how after all these years she’d come to the cynical conclusion, though she wasn’t cynical in the least, that to take offense was fruitless, that nothing could be worked out but only buried and masked.

Pasha gave a sigh and rolled to a sitting position. Agreement scattered everybody—they rushed into and out of rooms, to the bathroom, for a drink of water, to pack the cherries, gather the towels, where are Robert’s swimming trunks, and what about the beach blanket? Watching Pasha get ready was worse than watching a pot boil. It wasn’t that he had a leisurely disposition but that his brain and body had long ago, perhaps at birth, suffered a breach, leaving his body on autopilot. His mind was neglectful, self-involved, preoccupied; its moods didn’t reflect on the body, which applied a mechanical thoroughness to every undertaking, whether tying his shoelaces, blowing his nose, typing, or consuming Hunan shrimp, discovered last night to be more effective than corticosteroids for his sinusitis. By the time his shorts were buttoned—or rather his brother-in-law Levik’s shorts, since Pasha had brought with him for a monthlong visit only one pair (also Levik’s hand-me-downs), onto which he’d immediately tipped the welcoming glass of young Georgian wine—Esther, Pasha’s mother, had packed a suitcase of nourishment (apples, cherries, plums, apricots, or the hard balls of assorted sizes and shades that passed for them in this country), replenishment (bologna sandwiches), stimulant (black tea), reward (poppy-seed rolls), punishment (carrots), and something to pass the time with (sunflower seeds, clothes that needed mending). Habits shouldn’t be allowed to cement—they must be extracted early on, like wisdom teeth. In Odessa, Esther and Robert’s dacha had been a ten-minute walk from the sea, which for reasons that don’t translate was considered a long, arduous journey. If a crucial beach accoutrement was forgotten at home, no one would’ve thought to go back to get it. Decades of this kind of training had instilled a dogged discipline. Now that the ocean was in the front yard of their building, Esther still packed so that nothing would be lacking. The governing rule: There must be surplus, yet nothing should spoil.

At the last moment, Levik decided he’d rather not go—it was Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. Tape it, said Marina. But he was developing a migraine. Wear a cap and take two Advil. Where’s the sunscreen? There’s no sunscreen—what do you think this is, a pharmacy? Well, they wouldn’t be long, just an hour, hour and a half, before the sun got strong. But it’s already a quarter of eleven! Did they still have that umbrella with the green and beige stripes? Maybe it was in the hall closet with the other junk— Are you out of your mind? It ripped ages ago, not to mention flew off with a not-particularly-hearty gust into the Atlantic. Marina peeked into her daughter’s room. Two giant, grimy feet poked out from under a blanket. Frida! she screamed. We’re off to the beach without you!

Esther took this moment to corner her son. Her damp face gave off a postmenopausal odor, like overripe apricot flesh. The sweat never had time to dry. And like flypaper it caught everything it came into contact with—hairs, lint, fruit flies. Pasha, she said, can I ask a tiny favor, please don’t get angry, just try to hear me out, a bit of patience—

Out with it!

Take that thing off.

Oh, not this again.

Just while you’re here—for Frida’s sake.

She’s nine!

But she’s a curious girl. She’ll start asking questions, and next thing you know—

She’s running off to join a convent?

It’s not impossible. She still occasionally makes the sign of the cross over herself.

And that’s my fault?

Where else did she get it?

TV. Classmates. She goes to school by now, I hope.

Is it so much to ask, Pasha? Would it be so difficult?

He looked to the side, as if consulting the couch. He’d thought that the combination of circumstances—the separation, his mother’s condition, the palliative effect of time—would’ve finally rendered this a non-issue. Wishful thinking. His conversion was bound to remain an open wound on the family flesh, susceptible to infection. At twenty he’d inflicted the injury. There had been the technicality of the process—an elaborate theater of spite, as Esther called it, convinced that every step of it was being done to undo her. The catechumen period had been auspiciously brief. The priest practically apologized on God’s behalf, as if Pasha’s soul had ended up in the Yid pile by accident, in a forgetful or clumsy moment. He received the Eucharist like a crying toddler slipped a pacifier. At last spiritually content. He wore a conspicuous though not garish silver crucifix around his neck (later tucked into T-shirts), attended services, believed in creationism, had convincing arguments and logical proofs against Darwin’s theory, which had the quality of withering immediately in the convinced person’s brain and being impossible to paraphrase, and collected icons. The icons weren’t just any old icons, rather they were very old icons, obtained after hours of sifting through junk under the junk owner’s suspicious stare and briny breath, plucked from the heaps of vendors who had no clue they possessed anything of worth and wouldn’t have believed it if you told them. The Soviet Union’s skewed ratio of valuable objects to discerning collectors resulted in Pasha’s acquiring a reputation for clutter. Correction: domestic chaos. Someone was usually around to provide the reproaching. One evening he came home holding a tiny wooden panel with chipped, blackened paint in which he claimed to see the Virgin of Kazan. At least two hundred years old, he said, trembling. Ten kopecks! After months of painstaking restoration, the black lady materialized for everyone to see. Not all instances were so exemplary.

To be sure, Pasha was a far cry from a zealot. The conversion was an appropriation of aesthetic symbols and traditions essential to his craft. Did he not consider, however, that he could appropriate them without the theater, as, for example, Brodsky had? Was it really necessary to believe? A grand gesture had been in order. Pasha stood too apart, was too achingly himself. Self-consciousness in such extreme potency wouldn’t do for a Russian poet. By joining the Orthodox Church with its hundred million adherents (exact figure?), its seventy-five percent of the Russian population, the fledgling Pasha had been fastening a link that would allow him to roam freely without the danger of floating off into the attic of an ivory tower (reverse gravity being the poet’s hazard). And through this link he’d stave off tendencies inherited from a line of depressives. Father, grandfather, uncles, great-grandfathers—dysthymic men of Literature and Medicine, oblivious to the political and cultural climate, abiding only mental weather, then wondering how they got caught in this pogrom or that war. Pasha stifled his genetic tendencies before they could stifle him. Tied to a belief system and other souls, he had no choice but to care, to be affected, to be a part.

What an outburst his mother’s request would’ve provoked a few years ago, how indignant he would’ve gotten, how hot in the face. That he was even considering complying was a sign that he was getting old. But he knew regardless, with or without signs. If it’ll make you happy, he said, growing a double chin as he struggled with the clasp.

The beach! Unable to coordinate a mass exodus, they left in spurts, Esther and Robert hauling supplies in the lead, and five minutes later Marina tugged Levik’s weight off the couch, instructing Frida to get ready quickly and not leave without her uncle, they’d be waiting in the usual spot, to the left of lifeguard Hercules. The door slammed shut, a reverberating silence spread through the apartment. Frida dashed into the bathroom, tripping over her stocky legs as she slipped into a cobalt bikini, checking in, momentarily, with her recently activated nipples. Esther was convinced the American diet was to blame. What in the diet? No one would’ve let her administer the experiments she was devising to find out. Frida flew into the living room. Her uncle sat on a footstool, leaning forward to turn the glossy page of a book that lay on the floor. Let’s go! she said.

Pasha raised his husklike head. It seemed to breathe from the top.

Look at this, he said, directing her attention to the floor. She fidgeted, her jutting globular knees (like his jutting globular knees) punched the cotton sunflowers of her dress, which even Pasha could tell was all wrong for her. She wasn’t an airy little girl. There was something sumoesque in her stance. She was more su...

Revue de presse :

Praise for Panic in a Suitcase:

Named a Best or Notable Book of 2014 by the New York Times, Washington Post , Salon, NPR, Electric Literature, Gawker, Buzzfeed, and Flavorwire and a "Book You Need to Read in 2015" by Refinery 29

"Impressive ... beautifully drawn ... Akhtiorskaya layers the novel with equal parts humor and anxiety and expertly highlights the unease of having one foot in and one foot out of the old country. ... The book succeeds, phenomenally, at presenting the immigrant duality. ... The relationships Akhtiorskaya mines are fascinating and tender, her writing crisp and gorgeous in its ability to capture gnawing attempts to piece together an immigrant identity. Panic in a Suitcase is a rewarding biography of displacement, where those left behind are often as disconnected as those who flee for an elusive better life elsewhere." —The New York Times Book Review

“This 28-year-old writer from Odessa subordinates the violence of nations for a moment and offers the balm of laughter... Equal parts borscht stew and Borscht belt ... this is the great immigrant story drained of its inspirational hype. ... One wonders if Akhtiorskaya hasn’t descended from some unacknowledged Russian branch of Kingsley Amis’s family.... Genius.”—The Washington Post

“A virtuosic debut [and] a wry look at immigrant life in the global age” —Vogue

“A breath of fresh air... [Akhtiorskaya is] a deeply perceptive writer, and her observations about the family's experience as immigrants to America are sharp and sometimes heartbreaking... [and] leavened by [her] dry, brilliant sense of humor...Panic in a Suitcase isn't just remarkable as a literary debut, but also as a uniquely American work of fiction... It's a testament to Akhtiorskaya's wit, generosity, and immense talent as a young American author.” —NPR

“[A] spirited first novel...Akhtiorskaya approaches the fundamental experience of exile with tenderness and satiric wit” —The San Francisco Chronicle

"This funny, smart novel details the lives of Ukrainian émigrés who have moved to Brighton Beach. The best way to read it? On location, of course" —Refinery 29, "Books You Need to Read in 2015"

“As Russian immigrant fiction evolves from novelty niche to full-on genre, every new effort faces a higher bar for originality. Akhtiorskaya vaults that bar with ease. Her characters...inhabit a post-Soviet universe in which you actually can go home again. Or possibly never even leave... [and] her vibrant blend of wordplay, wistfulness, and poignantly comic characters immediately conjures Nabokov’s academic farce, Pnin.” —Vulture

“Brilliant and often funny... the kind of fiction that is richer than real life...charged with consistently imaginative language and great verve... Ms. Akhtiorskaya’s prose keeps the pace moving as quickly as any suspenseful plot could...[a] sparkling debut.” —The New York Times

“A riotous, satirical take on the aspirational escape-to-a-better-life saga... Reading Akhtiorskaya's tale of two cities is a high-impact verbal workout that may leave you breathless.”—Los Angeles Times

"In an engrossing, sensitive, and funny narrative, Akhtiorskaya captures the transcendent absurdities of intra-family communication and explores the way one family’s decisions can ‘cast a shadow that could be interpreted as fate.’”
— The New Yorker

"Capturing the irritations and intricacies of family life with Nabokovian humor and wit ... [Akhtiorskaya] gets at capital-T Truth without a hint of sentimentality, achieving the intangible literary goal of showing our oft-banal world in a familiar yet astonishing light.”—Elle

“Panic in a Suitcase is a valuable addition to the novels capturing the Eastern European immigrant experience in America. Akhtiorskaya has found a bit of grotesque fun in this age-old story, a significant achievement.” —Chicago Tribune

"Very nearly Nabokovian." —New York Magazine

“[Akhtiorskaya’s] voice is utterly original and unique, but also confident enough that the reader happily follows her wherever her kaleidoscopic vocabulary and unpredictable turns of phrase may lead. Lines that demand to be copied into notebooks abound...  It is one of the most successful, entertaining, uniquely-written pieces of fiction I have ever read...Like everyone else who rightly decides to pick up this book, I will await Akhtiorskaya’s next novel with rabid anticipation.” —Artvoice

“Panic in a Suitcase makes something unexpectedly refreshing out of the overcooked tropes of the immigrant household struggling in its new environs... Akhtiorskaya’s work, with its attentiveness to the small but crucial moment, its meandering from perspective to perspective to perspective, put me in mind of Virginia Woolf...reading her debut novel, one can easily believe that she may well write a true masterpiece and soon.” —The Jewish Daily Forward

“Akhtiorskaya has a gift for vivid, unexpected detail and evocative metaphor... Peopled with smartly drawn, humorously caricatured characters and packed with clever, evocative description, Panic in a Suitcase is a charming, chaotic read.”—The Huffington Post

“For all of the glorious eccentricities of [Akhtiorskaya’s] characters, the enduring message of this book is both deeply universal and faithful to the idiosyncrasies on display...[Panic in a Suitcase has] humor and catharsis in abundance” —Christian Science Monitor

“An impressive tragicomedy about culture shock, integration and the tangle of family bonds...Akhtiorskaya’s many dizzying locutions and descriptions...are redolent of early Nabokov... her rich language and ideas sublimate the mundane — 'the katastrofa that is everyday life' — into something very special indeed.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“[Akhtiorskaya] drags the churning hopes, terrors, delusions, and disillusions of emigration in late-capitalist America to the surface... crystallizing the experience of three generations, two countries, and an overlooked immigrant community in 300 pages of muscular, unpredictable prose”—The Millions

“Sharply observed and very funny... exuberant set pieces about modern émigré life [are] animated by Akhtiorskaya's insider knowledge and her offbeat way with words...ingenious” —NPR

“Akhtiorskaya writes fearlessly, like a dancer who’s never been injured pushing every move to the max... reading this giddily inventive prose is like touring a city where you’ve lived all your life and discovering entire districts you didn’t know existed... A thrilling debut by a writer with a generous soul.” —San Diego Jewish World

“Akhtiorskaya [has a] spectacular voice and uncanny ability to spot the absurdity in everything...[the] linguistic pleasures are ... bold and memorable...the author hits homeruns on every page of the novel with her clever insights about family dynamics and immigrants....[An] immensely gifted novelist with a sharp eye for the ridiculous and a bright literary future.” —Pop Matters

“[Panic in a Suitcase]’s prose truly sets it apart, bursting with such striking imagery, syntactic complexity, and poeticism that it would do its own protagonist proud.” —Nylon

“Yelena Akhtiorskaya is one of New York’s best young writers — funny and inventive and stylistically daring, yes, but also clear-eyed and honest.” —The Millions

“Lyrical, funny... deftly crafted... Ms. Akhtiorskaya, who is under 30, writes like an old soul... Panic in a Suitcase effectively paints the picture of family that is anything but smooth, and... Akhtiorskaya’s unique linguistic gifts reflect and even illuminate her rough-textured worlds.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“An amusingly off-kilter glimpse of a family lost in transition, with jokes aplenty tinged with an authentic Russian Borscht Belt attitude.” —The Jewish Week

"A hilarious debut...Akhtiorskaya excels at humorous, slightly overstated character sketches, making each person uniquely absurd.”
—Publisher's Weekly

“Marvelous...With beautiful prose that often feels like poetry, Akhtiorskaya portrays America from an outsider’s perspective while revealing the collective truths about families no matter where they live...A touching and darkly funny first novel that is sure to be adored by readers everywhere. Very highly recommended.”
—Library Journal (starred review)

“Given current events, Akhtiorskaya’s debut—concerning an immigrant family’s ambivalent ties to America and those who choose to stay behind in Ukraine—could not be more timely... [her] set-piece descriptions are drawn with sharp humor... and sensory flamboyance [that] allows rays of genuine emotion to filter through the social and domestic satire.” –Kirkus [starred review]

“A mercilessly funny debut novel about a Russian family washing up, and out, in America. Yelena Akhtiorskaya seems helplessly bound to deliver the truth, in perfect prose, about our families, wherever they are from. She is a tremendously good new writer.”
—Ben Marcus, author of Leaving the Sea and The Flame Alphabet

“This is not only a wise, funny novel; it feels like the beginning of a thrilling career. Yelena Akhtiorskaya's sentences plunge the reader headlong into the energy, anxiety, frailty, and love of the Nasmertov family of Brooklyn and Odessa. She finds poetry in clamor and disorder, and she sees her characters from every angle, with a rare mix of clarity and compassion.”
– Chad Harbach, author of The Art of Fielding 

“Sentence after sentence, Panic in a Suitcase is infused with humor and poetry, as Akhtiorskaya's characters emerge beautiful and hilarious and splendorous in all their failings. Her language and intelligence achieve what only great literature can do: transform what you know and love into something strange and new, making the world realign itself according to the writer's sensibility. I'd read a take-out menu written by Yelena Akthiorskaya, but Panic in a Suitcase is a humbling, astonishing debut. Get to it as soon as you can.”
—Aleksandar Hemon

“I think Yelena Akhtiorskaya is a genius. What she manages to do, linguistically and emotionally, in the span of a single sentence, is astonishing.”
—Keith Gessen, author of All the Sad Young Literary Men

“Yelena Akhtiorskaya creates a beautifully precise and vibrant world populated by touching, funny, unforgettable characters. A true joy to read.”
—Lara Vapnyar, author of Memoirs of a Muse

 

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Riverhead Books
• Date d'édition: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1594632146
• ISBN 13: 9781594632143
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 320